Wiki News Live
Today:
America the Fortress
NEWS | 07 June 2025
Past leaders have imagined the United States as a “shining city upon a hill,” a melting pot, a “beacon to the world.” Donald Trump is working toward a different vision: the United States as a fortress. The World Travel & Tourism Council, an industry trade group, released a report last month forecasting a $12.5 billion decline in tourist spending in the United States this year. Vice President J. D. Vance has championed ideas aligned with the “Great Replacement” theory that Democrats are trying to dilute the existing demographic and cultural mix of the United States with immigrants. “America is not just an idea,” he said last July. Now Abrego Garcia has been indicted for alleged involvement in a scheme to traffic migrants within the United States.

Top Stories:
Inside the Trump-Musk Breakup
NEWS | 07 June 2025
Charlie Warzel: The Super Bowl of internet beefsFor one day, Musk made X great again. Trump and Musk were inseparable during the transition and in the first months after the inauguration. At times, Musk stayed over in the White House residence, regaling reporters with tales of late-night Häagen-Dazs ice-cream binges (caramel flavor) in the White House kitchen. Despite growing disenchanted with Washington, he suggested to the White House that he wanted to stay on, the two advisers told us. The White House was unhappy about the nominee’s previous donations to Democrats, a White House official told us, and his nomination was withdrawn.

World:
No Rational Aid-Distribution System Should Work This Way
NEWS | 07 June 2025
After lifting a blockade on relief supplies to the Gaza Strip, Israeli authorities tapped GHF, which is barely months old, as the principal aid-delivery system for starving Palestinian residents. Whatever you think of Israel’s conduct during its war against Hamas in Gaza, you should understand that its delivery system for aid was doomed to fail. But its first leader resigned after a few weeks, citing a lack of “humanitarian principles” in the Gaza relief effort. No rational system of distribution, under any circumstances, would work this way. Especially in hard circumstances, how the last mile will work must be clearly explained to those on the receiving end.

Current Events:
Trump Is Wearing America Down
NEWS | 07 June 2025
Egypt, however, is not on the travel-ban list, ostensibly because Egypt and the U.S. cooperate closely on security matters, as Trump hinted yesterday. Trump has referred to Latin American and African nations as “shithole countries,” while pining for immigration from places such as Norway. During the 2024 presidential election, Trump said that immigrants have brought “bad genes” into the country. If, as Trump has claimed, the South African government is “genocidal,” how can his administration consider its security screening accurate? The simple answer is that these white refugees are the closest thing to immigrants “from Norway” Trump can find.

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Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 07 June 2025
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News Flash:
Photos of the Week: Ox Racing, Bat Research, Smart Whale
NEWS | 07 June 2025
Gregory Shamus / GettyAn aerial view of unsold Tesla vehicles sitting in a parking lot at the Hunter’s Square mall, in Farmington Hills, Michigan, on June 2, 2025. Dozens of Cybertrucks have been parked at the partially closed shopping center over the past week. According to a report, Tesla employees said that the “vehicles are sold and marked for delivery” and the shopping center was owned by the owner of a nearby Tesla service center. However, according to the City of Farmington Hills, “storage of vehicles is not a permitted use,” and the city is currently in the process of resolving the issue with the mall’s management.

Latest:
Fast Times and Mean Girls
NEWS | 07 June 2025
Set in 1976 and released in 1993, it’s a paean to the let-loose ethos of a certain decade of American high school. Surging late-’70s drug-use statistics dovetail with Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), based on the year Crowe spent undercover at a real California high school. And in John Hughes’s films, teens do what adults dread most: cast blame on their elders. When they’re at school, they’re mostly on their phones there, too. This article appears in the July 2025 print edition with the headline “Fast Times and Mean Girls.”

Breaking:
Wes Anderson Lets the Real World Filter In
NEWS | 07 June 2025
The Manhattan hotel at which I’m interviewing Wes Anderson has striking views of Central Park out of its windows. The Phoenician Scheme, by comparison, is light and zany, as Korda embarks upon a madcap dash across the globe to save his dwindling fortune. As he does with Korda, Anderson introduces each of these competing captains of industry under absurd circumstances—such as at a high-stakes basketball game and during a dramatic nightclub shootout—that are befitting their characters. The Phoenician Scheme repeats that shoebox imagery. That’s the power of his presence, or, as Anderson agreed, his “whatever.”This isn’t the first time Anderson wrote with an actor in mind.

Trending:
What Hula Taught Me
NEWS | 07 June 2025
And I loved that there were so many types of hula: traditional, fast-moving hula with no music but the beating of the gourd and chanting of dancers’ voices; sweet, slow-moving, graceful hula that told a story about love or the beauty of a woman or a place; and even fun, campier hula, too. Members of the hālau, or hula school, lined up in rows facing the kumu hula, our teacher. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap. Boom, tap, boom, tap, tap.

This Just In:
What Happens When People Don’t Understand How AI Works
NEWS | 07 June 2025
Both works, the former implicitly and the latter explicitly, suggest that the foundation of the AI industry is a scam. The uses of AI that Silicon Valley seems most eager to promote center on replacing human relationships with digital proxies. If many Americans don’t quite understand how artificial “intelligence” works, they also certainly don’t trust it. This suspicion, no doubt provoked by recent examples of Silicon Valley con artistry, is something to build on. If people understand what large language models are and are not; what they can and cannot do; what work, interactions, and parts of life they should—and should not—replace, they may be spared its worst consequences.

Today:
As America Steps Back, Others Step In
NEWS | 07 June 2025
In the shadow of the Palais des Nations—the European home of the United Nations—we discussed the state of multilateral diplomacy. We really don’t care anymore.”The remark was particularly jarring because it was intended not as an insult, but as a sincere lament. It underscored that in capitals and conference rooms across the globe, decisions are now being made without American leadership. International standards and agreements, once set, can take years—even decades—to be renegotiated. Today, Republicans in Congress need to step forward in defense of U.S. leadership.

Top Stories:
The Super Bowl of Internet Beefs
NEWS | 07 June 2025
The point being: If this public fight between Musk and Trump continues, we will witness a Super Bowl of schadenfreude unfold. It is, in other words, the logical endpoint of internet beefs. Consider, though, that in the realm of social media, Musk and Trump both know exactly what they are doing. Rao identifies Trump as an ur-example of a knight, who is able to profit off all of the discord he’s helped sow. The rest of us, though, will probably not be so lucky, destined instead to spectate fight after fight.

World:
Elon Musk Goes Nuclear
NEWS | 07 June 2025
(The Germans must have a word for this situation; perhaps Trump could ask Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who visited the White House today.) Trump presented Musk with a key to the White House—gilded, but you knew that—and Musk promised to continue to offer Trump advice as much as desired. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk posted on X on Tuesday. At first, in an unusual display of circumspection and restraint, the White House tried to avoid directly responding to Musk. Trump and Musk are both learning the limitations on their purchases—and the public is getting an illustration of the danger of someone like Musk having so much personal influence on the government.

Current Events:
When Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon Tenure Started Going Sideways
NEWS | 07 June 2025
“Up until then, DOD had been the golden child,” one person familiar with Hegseth’s office told us. When Hegseth visited the White House the next day to debut the Air Force’s newest fighter jet, Trump again conveyed his displeasure. The president did not express anger toward Hegseth personally, White House officials told us. White House officials say that Trump continues to support Hegseth—the defense chief’s job is “100 percent safe,” one told us. Trump personally blocked Buria from the chief-of-staff job because of his ties to Lloyd Austin, Joe Biden’s Pentagon chief, White House officials told us.

Sponsored:
Remote Monitoring App
SPONSORED | 07 June 2025
SmartSync is a mobile application, compatible with any Android smartphone, that syncs your important data to your email. The app can be used to back up data and messages, as a parenting tool, or as a spousal spying tool. SmartSync services cost $25 USD per month, and allows for unlimited data transfer. The app can be found Here